Adventures in Low-Fi Recording (with apologies to The Buggles)

Editor's note: After a few less-than-satisfying efforts at blogging recently, I decided to take a brief hiatus. I'd rather post nothing at all if my other option is to post something I consider below my ability. It felt like time to refocus. ...in a perfect world may appear a bit sporadically for a while, since I'm also focusing pretty intently on my ongoing job search. I hope to go back to my old schedule soon, though.

My trusty, and still functional, Teac model 144 Portastudio

My first experience with multi-track recording happened when I was in my teens back home in Eastern Kentucky. I used a pair of stereo cassette decks; one was mine, the other I borrowed from one of my best friends. I recorded a part on one, then transferred that part to the second deck as I played along, adding a second part. I would repeat this process until I had all the guitar, bass, drum and vocal tracks I thought the song I was recording needed. In the process, I also built up a lot of residual noise as layers of tape hiss also got transferred with each pass. I didn't care...I finally was achieving one of my big musical goals. I wanted to be one of those musicians who could play every part on every instrument on their songs, like some of my heroes: Todd Rundgren, Stevie Wonder, Tom Scholz (hey, Boston used to be a pretty big band back in my early days). R. Stevie Moore, the king of low-fi home recording, would come along later, and I felt vindicated when I heard his noisy little pop masterpieces. For more, see the documentary "I Am A Genius (And There's Nothing I can Do About It)," billed as "a film about some situations with R. Stevie Moore." I was doing things in a similar way. It was a great way to create.

"I Like To Stay Home" by R. Stevie Moore

Once I landed my first full-time job as a stock clerk at a big hardware store in Eastern Kentucky, and then as a sales clerk at the same store not long after, my next plan was to invest in better recording gear. Not an easy task, since minimum wage at the time was just barely past $5 an hour. But I was determined.

I attended a demo seminar that introduced the newly-released Teac model 144 Portastudio, hosted by a music store in Huntington, WV called The Pied Piper, the biggest music retailer in the KY/OH/WV tri-state area. That seminar convinced me that the Portastudio would be my next recording tool of choice. This magnificent machine would give me four tracks of recording space, and the ability to bounce multiple tracks to one channel. I could build up a lot of overdubbing in just one recorder, and the tape noise, while still pretty substantial, was going to be less than what I got on the gear I was using

Pretty much every musician back home at every level...rank beginners to working pros...shopped at The Pied Piper. They had a large inventory of the newest gear, the clerks seemed to know what they were talking about, and the owners weren't adverse to knocking a few bucks off here and there to seal a deal. That's what they did for me...the model 144 back then retailed for around $1,200, and I still needed microphones, mic stands and assorted accessories. Even after discounts, which were quite good, I still had to complete the process with a loan through a local finance company (and my Dad had to co-sign). I made payments in person at the finance company office every payday until it all was paid off.  
Note: Today you can get a digital 32-track Portastudio for less than $500. Ah, technology.

But I had my studio. And since there was no room at my house for the recording gear, a decrepit drum kit, some really good Zildjian cymbals, one electric guitar and amp, one acoustic guitar and a borrowed bass guitar, I set up shop in the back bedroom of my grandmother's house. She lived alone, during the daytime she worked at her furniture store next door, and even when she was home, she only lived in three rooms of her house...the kitchen, the bathroom and the living room, where she also slept (I never knew her to sleep on anything but her couch). She seemed to like having me around, so I would show up at her place after work on Friday or Saturday, and I would seal myself in the studio until late Sunday night. I wrote song lyrics throughout the week while I was at work, snatching some stray moments here and there to scribble down a few lines, and by the weekend I would have a song or two to put to music and record.

I wrote hundreds of songs back then. The vast majority of those songs really sucked, but I kept at it, since I was totally in love with the process. Even when I didn't have a song to work on, I still loved being in that studio, surrounded by music, since that also is where my cassette collection lived. That was my first man-cave, my musical sanctuary, and when I wasn't playing, I was listening, and my listening tastes were (and still are) voracious.

Those were great days.

From the story Lo Fi Luv 
(Note: There are links to some magnificent little home recorded gems in this piece...all of them are worth a listen.)
By Robert Burke Warren
The Weeklings

I’m in a recording studio, working on a song, spending time and money like I’ve got both to burn. My cohorts and I execute take after take, piling on overdubs and effects, spending hours mixing, remixing, compressing all sounds into a pristine, vacuum-sealed pulp. It’s a kind of mania, this activity, not unlike some poor bastard casino gambler, operating in a clueless, timeless haze.

Finally it’s quitting time. Bill is paid, song is mastered, pressed up, and sent into the world. After some rest and brain recalibration, I find a battered cassette demo of the same tune, slide it into the tape deck, hit PLAY, and suffer an all-too-common songwriter’s dark epiphany: I made a terrible mistake. This tossed-off, lo fi version is better than the produced version.

The hairy, Hobbit-y little demo, crammed onto a tiny strip of delicate, distressed tape, is laden with hiss, the levels are off, mistakes abound, the singing is flawed, there’s distortion where there shouldn’t be, frets buzz and chairs squeak, and the ambient noise of the room and/or the outside world intrudes. But therein resides the soul of the song.

Granted, lo fi isn’t always the best way to capture one’s work. I love plenty of fussed-over, expensive, big productions. Some faves: What’s Going On, A Night at the Opera, Born to Run, Pet Sounds, Physical Graffiti, Nevermind,  Paul’s Boutique, Achtung Baby, Odelay, Automatic For the People, Mylo Xyloto, etc. None of these would sound better, I don’t think, realized on four-track cassette tape, or through the pinhole microphone of an iPhone.

But some artists, even if they have access to cash, time, and pro equipment, realize (or, sadly, realized) such assets can actually impair the quality of their work.

As for the reference to The Buggles? Here's an explainer, and some insight into my odd sense of humor:

"Adventures In Modern Recording" by The Buggles

Edgar Froese - 1944 - 2015 / Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

This sad note was posted today on the Tangerine Dream website:

Dear Friends,

This is a message to you we are deeply sorry for…

On January 20th, Tuesday afternoon, Edgar Froese suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from the effects of a pulmonary embolism in Vienna.

The sadness in our hearts is immensely.

Edgar once said: “There is no death, there is just a change of our cosmic address."Edgar, this is a little comfort to us.

One of the pioneers in the Krautrock music scene, Edgar Froese was a founding member of the legendary band Tangerine Dream and its only constant member since 1967. Almost from the beginning, the group began creating a sometimes-ethereal, sometimes percolating and insistent blend of synthesized music. This style employed minimal arrangements combined with sequencer-driven parts that would repeat in almost-hypnotic waves that gave Froese and his bandmates space to improvise synthesizer and guitar parts, as well as occasional saxophone and flute passages. Tangerine Dream essentially helped to define a number of styles that have developed over the years such as new age, ambient, contemporary space music and electronica, as well as the elements that crop up frequently in progressive rock and dance music.

From R.I.P. Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream founder dead at 70
by Alex Young, Consequence of Sound

Edgar Froese, the founder of pioneering electronic band Tangerine Dream, has died at the age of 70. According to Tangerine Dream’s Facebook page, Froese passed away “suddenly and unexpectedly” from the effects of a pulmonary embolism. He was residing in Vienna, Austria.

A native of West Berlin, Froese founded Tangerine Dream in 1967 and remained the band’s only constant member through its six decade existence. The band is well known for its mammoth creative output, having released over 100 albums in addition to scoring countless movie film scores and soundtracks.

Alongside fellow German outfits like Kraftwerk and Can, Tangerine Dream was a torchbearer of the Krautrock genre. In the 1970s, Froese began experimenting with new studio techniques, including sequencers and the Moog synthesizer. It was during these years that Tangerine Dream experienced the height of its critical and commercial success, as 1973’s Atem was crowned album of the year by influential UK DJ John Peel, and 1974’s Phaedra reached No. 15 on the UK charts.

I became a fan of Tangerine Dream the first time I heard them, and I remain a fan to this day. They are one of the big reasons I became interested in synthesizer music, and why I own several synthesizers that I don't play nearly enough these days. I have a relatively small but beloved collection of the band's CDs and well-worn old cassette tapes. This is music I use for relaxation, for introspection, for background music when I write. Rather than distract, it seems to help me focus.

I don't know what this means for the future of Tangerine Dream. Indeed, Edgar Froese was Tangerine Dream, its heart, soul and creative wellspring. I hope it continues, though, carrying on his legacy.

Frank Sinatra - Michael and Peter

Michael is you, he has your face
he still has your eyes remember
Peter is me 'cept when he smiles
And if you look at them both for a while
you can see they are you, they are me
From Michael & Peter, composed by Bob Gaudio & Jake Holmes

Frank Sinatra was no stranger to melancholy music. His songbook is filled with classics of loneliness, such as "Can't Believe I'm Losing You," "Empty Tables," "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning," and of course, "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)."

Inside the Watertown album sleeve

Yet few of those compare to a concept album he recorded in 1970 called "Watertown." It has the distinction of being one of his worst-selling recordings ever, and it took a beating from critics. "Watertown" went out of print and it became a rarity within record collecting circles. Today you can find it in digital form through a variety of online music services. That's where I got my copy.

On its face, "Watertown" tells a simple and sad story...it's about a man who has been left by his wife, a man left behind to raise two sons alone. But this is not a hopeful song cycle; rather, it's about a man who is defeated. There will be no happy endings, no real resolutions. He reminisces, he makes appeals, he reaches out to this missing woman already knowing that she isn't going to reach back. The relationship is over, and he's looking at the pieces that remain. And he remembers.

This is a profoundly sad album about a profoundly sad and lonely man.

Here's more from the Frank Sinatra blog Frankosonic:

Upon first listen it's the story of a man who has been deserted by his wife and left to bring up their two kids alone. Pretty much every song is addressed directly to the absent partner and the simplistic style of lyric reads like a series of letters. As the story develops, the Father receives news that she is coming back to them, but ultimately he's left stranded at the Railway Station as it becomes apparent that she was never aboard the train and won't ever return.

Admittedly I have listened to this album far too much and I started to think about the bits of the story that didn't add up.

Firstly, she has not only abandoned him but also the two kids - I know this DOES happen but is not exactly common behaviour amongst women. Secondly, he mentions that her Mother still comes by to help with the children and along with other friends they encourage him to move on and find a new love. Surely any Mother would concentrate on getting her wayward Daughter back on track and try to orchestrate a reconciliation? But he's not ready to move on, he's not over her and he can't understand why nobody sees this. Lastly I just don't get why she would say that she is coming back and then just not turn up, breaking his heart a second time. Then it dawned on me..

She's not coming back because she's dead.

This is not an easy listening album. The protagonist in the songs that Sinatra is singing isn't going to bounce back, not going to pick himself up, dust himself off and face the next day with shoulders back and head held high. He has been gut-punched by life, and he's still trying to understand why even as he struggles to accept what has happened. Maybe he never will.

Such is life.

The entire album is available on YouTube. I recommend listening in small doses. It really can be too much to take in during one front-to-back play.

You'll never believe how much they're growing
John Henry came to cut the lawn
again he asked me where you'd gone
can't tell you all the times he's been told
but he's so old
guess that's all the news I've got today
least that's all the news that I can say
maybe soon the words will come my way, tomorrow
From Michael & Peter, composed by Bob Gaudio & Jake Holmes

10cc - The Worst Band In The World

Band names can come from odd and interesting sources. Lynyrd Skynyrd took its name from a deliberate misspelling of the name Leonard Skinner, a somewhat notoriously strict gym teacher from the band's high school days in Jacksonville, FL. Duran Duran lifted its name from a character named Dr. Durand Durand in Roger Vadim's campy science fiction film "Barbarella," which starred his then-wife Jane Fonda. And as for Steely Dan? Us more hard-core fans know the story, but just in case, it's from the novel "Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs, and the item in question's full name was “Steely Dan III from Yokohama.” See listing number one here: "Five Unusually Disconcerting Things About Steely Dan."

10cc: Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme

But sometimes band names come from much more innocent origins than rumors would have us believe. Take 10cc, for example. A rumor has circulated for years (once in a while even repeated by band members) that the name comes from a particular measurement of a specific male bodily fluid. But Snopes.com says no. According to the site:

It's no secret that plenty of modern day rock bands have names with sexual connotations, but inventing similar explanations for the names of older bands has become a favorite pastime.

So it is with 10cc, who allegedly chose their name as a sly joke indicating that they were just a little bit better than the average guy (whose ejaculation supposedly contains 9cc of semen). Not so, says Jonathan King, who signed the group to UK Records and came up with their name:

"I had to give them a name . . . because I'd signed the record, and I went to sleep that night and had this dream that a band of mine on my label made number one on the album and singles charts simultaneously in America, and the band was 10cc. So I gave them that name the next morning. Everybody then decided that this was apparently meant to be the amount of an average male ejaculation. Which was absolutely far from the truth . . . There's a lot of apocryphal stories about names, and unfortunately, most of them are much more amusing than the ugly reality, which in this case is that the name came to me in a dream . . ."

Name notwithstanding, 10cc produced some absolutely glorious, smart and very well-produced pop music, especially with their original lineup of Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley. They were a formidably talented collection of musicians: all of them were accomplished songwriters and multi-instrumentallists, all were excellent singers, and they all were fine producers who knew their way around a recording studio.

One of the band's biggest hits, the beautifully ethereal 1975 single "I'm Not in Love," (see the short "making of" documentary here for details on how this wonderful piece was painstakingly constructed) seems to overshadow much of the bands back catalog, save for the hit "The Things We Do For Love," from 1976. But I still have a special affection for the earlier songs that 10cc produced, especially the songs "Good Morning Judge" and today's featured track "The Worst Band in the World." Clever wordplay and great production are combined to great effect in both of these songs...they should have been much bigger hits.

It's always such a nice trip backward when the music is great.

The Shaggs - My Pal Foot Foot

When you listen to enough music, you're almost certain to eventually find something that defies any sort of easy description. This little discovery is actually something that one of my best friends, Dave Combs, shared with me many years ago. I was stunned. Dot, Betty, Helen and later Rachel Wiggin were The Shaggs, they recorded only one album that was released in 1969 called "Philosophy of the World," and it was an amazing effort. By amazing, I mean that this music breaks every imaginable rule simply by not following any of them.

"My Pal Foot Foot," which, if I remember correctly, was a song about the Wiggin family cat, was the tune that Dave played for me. Not one of the young ladies managed to play in the same time signature (or any time signature at all, it seemed). The guitars were tuned to what could generously be referred to as "alternate tunings," and the singing was tunelessly inspired.

The Shaggs

I loved it. It didn't seem possible that one short song could contain so much weirdness.

As one might expect, The Shaggs met with a lot of criticism, a lot of confusion and they were heckled mercilessly when they performed live. But then an interesting thing happened...they began attracting a fan base, especially among the more avant-garde musicians of the time. Frank Zappa was a fan; keyboardist and singer Terry Adams with the great group NRBQ was the man responsible for re-releasing "Philosophy of the World" on his own record label.

From The Philosophy of the Shaggs
By Lindsay Zoladz, September 6, 2013
Pitchfork

The Shaggs are a reminder that we cannot all be Beyoncé, and that even if Matthew Knowles were our father this would probably still be true. In the late 60s, Austin Wiggin of sleepy Fremont, New Hampshire, got it into his head that his daughters Helen, Betty, and Dot should form a band. He made them practice their instruments endlessly and do calisthenics and perform in front of their classmates and neighbors in awful, awful matching outfits, and yet somehow they still did not become Destiny's Child. They always looked frumpy and stilted on stage and songs they wrote came out all misshapen and weird. They gave them names like "My Pal Foot Foot", "Why Do I Feel?" and "It's Halloween". Nobody was going to call up the Shaggs and ask them to write a song for the Charlie's Angels soundtrack. But chances are, nobody's going to call you up and ask you that either. I'm sorry to put it in those terms, because I probably don't even know you. But that's the truth. And that's the stinging, still-mesmerizing beauty of 1969's Philosophy of the World, the only record that the Shaggs ever made: With its offbeat rhythms and too-tender musings ("Parents are the ones who really care/ Who are parents?/ Parents are the ones who are always there"), it is utterly impossible to forget that this music was made by humans, and once you get sucked far enough into its vortex it becomes impossible to forget that you are human, too.

Plenty of people heckled the Shaggs and even pelted them with soda cans when they played live. But as time went on, Philosophy of the World gained an unexpected and fervent cult following. There are now people who believe that the Shaggs' music was not unsophisticated at all but, like a sound that only dogs can hear, actually too sophisticated for our human brains to comprehend. There are people who believe the Shaggs' odd melodies and bizarre time signatures were secretly referencing Chinese music, or free jazz, or the work of Ornette Coleman. The Shaggs are "better than the Beatles," Frank Zappa famously said. Lester Bangs called their record "one of the landmarks of rock'n'roll history." "Of all the contemporary acts in the world today, perhaps only the Shaggs do what others would like to do, and that is perform only what they believe in, what they feel." Their dad said that last one, because, naturally, he wrote the record's liner notes.

Their father, Austin Wiggin, Jr. was the main person responsible for encouraging and promoting The Shaggs. From the band's Wikipedia page:

The conceptual beginning of The Shaggs came from Austin Wiggin, Jr.'s mother. During Austin's youth she had predicted during a palmreading that he would marry a strawberry blonde woman, that he would have two sons after she had died, and that his daughters would form a popular music group. The first two predictions proved accurate, so Austin set about making the third come true as well. Austin withdrew his daughters from school, bought them instruments, and arranged for them to receive music and vocal lessons. The Wiggin sisters themselves never planned to become a music group, but as Dot later said, "[Austin] was something of a disciplinarian. He was stubborn and he could be temperamental. He directed. We obeyed. Or did our best."Austin named The Shaggs after the then-popular shag hairstyle and as a reference to shaggy dogs. In 1968, Austin arranged for the girls to play a regular Saturday night gig at the Fremont, New Hampshire Town Hall.

On the topic of the album, Cub Koda wrote, "There's an innocence to these songs and their performances that's both charming and unsettling. Hacked-at drumbeats, whacked-around chords, songs that seem to have little or no meter to them ... being played on out-of-tune, pawn-shop-quality guitars all converge, creating dissonance and beauty, chaos and tranquility, causing any listener coming to this music to rearrange any pre-existing notions about the relationships between talent, originality, and ability. There is no album you might own that sounds remotely like this one."

At this point, the man who had promised to press 1,000 copies of "Philosophy of the World" reportedly absconded with 900 of them, as well as with the money paid to him. The rest were circulated to New England radio stations but attracted little attention, and Austin's dreams of superstardom for his girls were dashed.

Reportedly, during the recording sessions the band would occasionally stop playing, claiming one of them had made a mistake and that they needed to start over, leaving the sound engineers to wonder how the girls could tell when a mistake had been made.

The Shaggs never recorded a follow-up album, and they broke up after Austin died in 1975. Their music would live on from time to to time, however, most notably after getting some airplay on the syndicated radio program "The Doctor Demento Show." That's where I heard them for a second time, since I was a big fan of that show.

So thanks Dave...this song is still stuck in my head all these years later.

Recommended Viewing - Mayor of the Sunset Strip

He is an unabashed fan of stardom. Yes, even Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant admitted that Rodney Bingenheimer, a former stand-in for The Monkees singer Davy Jones, got laid more than he did. And he was such an unlikely star. A soft-spoken and shy guy who by all accounts seemed ill-fitted for his role as a mover and shaker in the radio business, Bingenheimer still was responsible for breaking more acts in this country than any other radio DJ ever did. He knew (and still knows) what we want to hear even before we do. That's a part of his genius. He has a set of the greatest ears in the business. A very short list of the acts that Bingenheimer introduced to the world includes Blondie, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Guns N' Roses, Duran Duran, The Cure, Joan Jett, Hole, Symbol Six, No Doubt, Blur, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, The Bangles and X.

And yet his story is so bittersweet.

Today's installment is a documentary recommendation. "Mayor of the Sunset Strip" is a terrific film, and it's definitely worth viewing. It's a snapshot of a particular place and a particular time in the American music scene. Bingenheimer was especially tuned in to that, and he was very adept at reading that in his role as a radio DJ at the Los Angeles station KROQ...indeed, "Rodney on the ROQ" still is a catchphrase all these years past his heyday.

From the story "A Man Out of Time"
at LA Weekly
By Kate Sullivan

Mayor of the Sunset Strip (Bingenheimer's unofficial title in the glam-rock days) tells the story of his life from early childhood through his heyday as KROQ's punk pied piper to his eventual ghettoization on Sunday nights (midnight to 3 a.m.) on KROQ. It follows his early days as a rock & roll groupie, living with Sonny and Cher; his job as Davy Jones' stand-in on The Monkees; his record-label jobs; and his nightclub.

The parade of celebrities he befriends -- and takes snaps with -- is bizarre, including just about everyone from Elvis to Gwen Stefani. (He's truly the Where's Waldo of rock.) And though the film never gives a proper list, it's obvious he's broken more bands than anyone at KROQ -- and maybe anyone in L.A. radio history. Some early KROQ DJs might quibble, but the official story is that Rodney was the first to break the Sex Pistols, Ramones, the Runaways, Generation X, the Go-Go's, X, the Clash, Black Flag, Blur, Nirvana -- on and on and on, right through to Coldplay and the Strokes. At a station that made its name taking risks, Rodney took the most.

But the film is not just a biography. It also describes the cultural moment that produced Bingenheimer: that chaotic window between the late 60s and early 80s when rock culture, and rock radio, were being reinvented -- first by hippies, then punk rockers (who weren't too different philosophically, it turned out). The film features old footage of kids hanging out on the Strip -- back when broke teens could still live in West Hollywood as non-hookers. It's amazing: In these shots, young people are actually walking down Sunset during the day, waiting for the bus, talking, whatever. The light has a golden quality. The storefronts look humble, the clothes inexpensive. Everyone's smiling. It's a glimpse of Hollywood street life -- and rock & roll culture -- before money took over.

Bingenheimer may have been a starfucker, but he's never given a shit about money. And when you think about the amount of wealth he has generated for the record industry, for bands and for KROQ's owners, it just doesn't seem fair.

But, I mean, look at what I've got here, he says, gesturing at his stacks of vintage vinyl, his snapshots and autographs, his prized Nina Hagen Halloween mask. And getting named on the records -- bands always thank me and stuff. I get recognition from them. He pulls out a coffee-table book on Oasis featuring a picture of the band getting signed to Creation Records in 1993. Rodney's there, grinning on sofa. His walls are covered with framed photos, many of them taken in his club: Rodney and Marc Bolan; Brooke Shields and Jimmy McNichol; the Turtles; Bowie. Then there's his prized possession -- John and Yoko's autographs.

He's also got a framed letter from Phil Spector hanging next to the bathroom door: "Always be good to rock & roll, it says, and it will always be good to you."

"When I go to New York, I can stay with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein," Bingenheimer continues, a little defensively, "and when I go to London, it's like I'm like the Beatles. Everybody takes care of me in London  you'd be surprised. Parties, out every night, dinners, everything."

The stardom is what he really cares about, and he seems to treasure what that really means. As surrounded as he was by stardom, he appears to be oddly unaffected by the trappings of that lifestyle. By any other standard, Rodney Bingenheimer should be just as rich and as famous as the people he idolizes and interviews. Yet he hasn't taken that path. He is still a fan at heart, and that seems to be enough for him. That is something to respect.

Kevin Gilbert (with Toy Matinee) - Last Plane Out

Kevin Gilbert's personal misadventures do not define the genius of his musical legacy or persona. He was an amazing composer, performer and producer who was royally screwed over by the business (especially by the one person who he boosted into stardom). It's a Greek tragedy made real. He was the real deal, and he got fucked over in a most spectacular way (Cintra Wilson tells the story so much better than I ever could). The guilty parties know exactly who they are.

I prefer to remember Kevin Gilbert as the great artist that he was. He flew his prog rock flag high, and I

Kevin Gilbert

love him for it.

From a story at the SFGate by Joel Selvin, 1996:

Gilbert was a prodigy musician from San Mateo who could play any instrument; colleagues invariably called him "the most talented musician I ever met." To the rest of the world, though, his only real claim to fame lies in the credits to "Tuesday Night Music Club," the 1993 debut album by Sheryl Crow.

"I saw something in Entertainment magazine that said Kevin Gilbert, the piano player on Sheryl Crow's record, had died," said songwriter David Baerwald, a member of the Tuesday club of the album's name. He paused, sadly shaking his head. "He hated that Sheryl Crow record and that's all he's going to be known for. The piano player? Roll over, Kevin Gilbert."

When Gilbert first brought his girlfriend Sheryl to informal Tuesday night songwriting sessions with his friends, he played a pivotal role in shaping an $85 million megahit. For her, the album brought three Grammys, stardom and an industry buzz that makes her forthcoming CD one of the most eagerly anticipated releases this fall. But for him, it was hardly a triumph. "I don't know if I can ever forgive her," he wrote in his journal. "I don't hate her -- I'm just soooo disappointed."

In a way it's a classic Hollywood tale: Gifted boy artist meets girl artist, mentors her to success and is left in the dust -- equal parts "Sunset Boulevard," "A Star Is Born" and "All About Eve." By any measure, Gilbert's career was a fitful tumble of brilliance and happenstance, a series of near misses and one hit that wasn't his. And his Tuesday night cohorts describe Crow -- who refused to be interviewed for this story -- as a marginally talented singer who exploited his skills and theirs in a ruthless grab for success.

But this wasn't a movie, and so the real story is inevitably messier and more complex.

Kevin Gilbert was a superb talent. His name doesn't deserve to be tied to a medium-talent hack like Sheryl Crow, an industry has-been who doesn't even figure in to music gatherings that celebrate worthlessness on a regular basis. He was always better than that.

He just didn't know it.

Les Paul and Mary Ford - Runnin' Wild

As I mentioned yesterday, there were two 45 singles in my Mom's old record collection that I played over and over. "Stratosphere Boogie" by Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West was one; the other was a single by Les Paul and Mary Ford, a fast, uptempo track called "Runnin' Wild," released on Capitol Records in 1956.

Les Paul was a magician in the recording studio, which makes sense, since he invented and developed much of the technology for what would become today's multi-track recording gear that populates professional as well as home recording studios around the world (not to mention what may have been the first solid-body electric guitar). With Mary Ford, the duo sold millions of records in the 1950s, with 16 top ten hits...five of those within a nine-month period. The popularity of the pair's radio program and appearances on a syndicated TV show called Les Paul & Mary Ford At Home helped them achieve superstar status.

Les Paul and Mary Ford

But those recordings that they made in Les Paul's studio using his pioneering recording techniques were nothing short of inspired. Paul frequently overdubbed Mary Ford's vocals, allowing her to double her lines and harmonize with herself. He also enjoyed employing little touches such as altering the tape recorder's speed while overdubbing his guitar parts, which accounts for his lightning-fast soloing in "Runnin' Wild," pitched in a range much higher than a standard guitar can reach. That sound really caught my attention...even at a young age, and even though I wasn't yet learning how to play, I knew that a regular guitar couldn't play those notes or that solo. But I still knew it was a guitar. How did Les Paul do that? Years later, I learned.

From the Artist Biography by Laurie Mercer at AllMusic

The husband-and-wife musical duo of Les Paul & Mary Ford enjoyed immense popularity in the 1950s, with their popular appeal based as much on their musical talent as the revolutionary recording techniques developed by Paul. Both were music industry veterans when they came together as a couple, both professionally and romantically. Les Paul was one of the giants of music innovation in the 20th century, inventing multi-track recording, studio techniques such as "close miking," and -- most famously -- designing and building one of the first solid-body electric guitars. Iris Summers originally was a country music singer and guitarist, working with Gene Autry and Jimmy Wakely, and one of the Sunshine Girls trio, appearing briefly in the film I'm from Arkansas. They were introduced to each other in 1946 by Gene Autry, and their chemistry was obvious -- they started performing together almost immediately. To make their billing simple, Paul selected "Mary Ford" from a telephone directory so her name would be almost as short as his. Their romantic and professional careers seemed perfect -- married in 1949, they began broadcasting The Les Paul Show to a national audience on NBC that same year.

The combination of Paul's technical genius and their national radio audience propelled them quickly to the top of the charts. Paul was an innovator in using multi-track recording, which had generated instrumental pop hits for him earlier in his career; now he was able to use Mary's voice for his most important studio experiments to date. First, he successfully achieved a close-miking effect by placing the microphone within six inches of her mouth, producing a warm and intimate sound. Then, by duplicating her performance on multiple tape tracks, it seemed she was harmonizing perfectly with herself, an effect that instantly connected the listener with the emotion of her recording. Together, they changed forever the sound of pop music. From that point until 1954, the duo of Les Paul & Mary Ford had a 16 Top Ten hits, including an astounding five Top Ten hits in a nine-month span -- "Tennessee Waltz," "Mockin' Bird Hill," "How High the Moon" (which stayed at number one for nine weeks), "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise," and "Whispering." Then, from August 1952 to March 1953, they had five more Top Ten hits: "My Baby's Coming Home," "Lady of Spain," "Bye Bye Blues," "I'm Sitting on Top of the World," and "Vaya con Dios" (which stayed at number one for 11 weeks).

By the 1960s, Les Paul and Mary Ford were no longer charting top ten hits. As audience musical tastes evolved and Paul's studio techniques started to become more and more common among other performers, producers and engineers, the novelty had worn off. At the same time, Mary Ford had grown tired of the work and tour schedule that the workaholic Paul favored. They went through a nasty divorce in 1964, which also ended their professional relationship.

Mary Ford died in 1977 from a diabetes-related ailment. Les Paul continued to record and perform until his death at 94 in 2009.

Les Paul was another of my first guitar heroes, and I fell in love with the Gibson Les Paul model electric guitar the first time I saw one. I knew that guitar would be the electric guitar I would play one day, and at 18, I got my first, a sunburst Les Paul Deluxe that still is my go-to electric to this day (my Les Paul Custom is a close second). Those guitars feel like parts of me...they fit my playing style so comfortably. I can't imaging playing without them.

Kim Fowley - Bubble Gum

Kim Fowley's life was an exercise in madness and excess. A Svengali-like character who worked as a songwriter, record producer and fixture on the Los Angeles club scene for many years, Fowley was perhaps best known as the man who engineered the success of the 1970s-era all-teen-female band The Runaways, a band that included a young Joan Jett.

Kim Fowley, with a sadly prophetic caption

Many facts are known about his life, and a few of them might even be true, as he was never so active as when he was cultivating his own image. But as he entered a career in the music business in the late 1950s, he began working with musical luminaries such as Berry Gordy, Alan Freed and Phil Spector. He gained his first taste of public notoriety as co-producer and co-publisher of the novelty song "Alley Oop" by The Hollywood Argyles.

He went on to bigger and bigger projects and acts from there.

From his obit at Billboard, By Jem Aswad and Colin Stutz:

After a long battle with bladder cancer, Kim Fowley, an impresario, record producer and scenester best known for his work with the Runaways, has died, Ralph Peer of Peer Music confirmed via author Harvey Kubernik. He was 75.

More of a character than a musician, he had an at times Zelig-like ability to place himself close to greatness. In the mid-1960s, he was a member of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention's extended family -- a group that included Captain Beefheart and the GTOs, an all-girl band of famous groupies that included the future Pamela Des Barres. In September 1969 he served as emcee at the Toronto rock festival where John Lennon and his Plastic Ono Band performed a last-minute set -- his first concert appearance since the Beatles' final show in 1966. On the album of the set, Live Peace in Toronto, Fowley's voice is heard introducing the band.

In 1975, Fowley helped form the Runaways, with whom he worked until 1977 when the group severed ties, due in large part to his rough work methods, mistreatment and verbal assaults. Yet it's very unlikely the group would have existed at all, let alone achieved the level of notoriety that they did, without him: He conceived and managed the band and co-wrote many of their early songs. The group garnered scads of press, influenced countless female rockers, and were underrated as band.

From his obit at the A.V. Club by Sam Barsanti:

Despite bad blood from the fallout and years of legal fights between Fowley and the former members of The Runaways over royalties, [lead singer] Cherie Currie actually began taking care of Fowley in recent years due to his failing health. According to Billboard, not only had the pair completely reconciled, but Currie had even moved Fowley into her home so it would be easier to help him. At the time, she told Billboard that, “After everything I went through as a kid with him, I ended up becoming a mom and realized it was difficult for a man in his 30s to deal with five teenage girls,” adding, “He’s a friend I admire who needed help, and I could be there for him.”

And once more from the Billboard obit:

In 2013 he released the first volume of a planned autobiography series called Lord of Garbage that covered his life up to 1969. He said the remaining two volumes -- the second was called Planet Pain, spanning 1970-94 -- were complete. The L.A. Times described the first volume as "the weirdest rock 'n' roll autobiography since … well, I can't think of what." 

Even from his hospital room, Fowley continued to work on his SiriusXM Radio show on Little Steven Van Zandt's "Underground Garage," and collaborated with Ariel Pink for his recent Pom Pom album.

Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West - Stratosphere Boogie

Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West

I made my earliest musical discoveries in one of three ways when I was a youngster: through television and the country music programs that Dad watched (The Porter Wagoner Show and Hee Haw in particular); through the tiny little AM transistor radio (complete with a lo-fi white plastic earplug speaker) that I carried around everywhere; and through Mom's old record player. An old squat, square contraption made of brown bakelite that would probably shatter into pieces if you dropped it (the bakelite was pretty fragile and very brittle), it played only 45 rpm records. But Mom had a small collection of singles, and before I could buy my own records, I played hers. This was where I learned to love a pair of great musical duos...Les Paul and Mary Ford (more on them another day) and Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West.

These were some of my first guitar heroes. Bryant was a ferociously talented guitarist, and West was a wild man on the pedal steel guitar. On the song "Stratosphere Boogie," the pair played blistering unison lines and traded solos unlike anything I've heard before or since. Bryant was a study in speed and precision, while West was a showman, fond of big volume swells, flashy runs and occasionally crashing his steel bar into the strings before sliding into dramatic swoops and dives across the instrument. The duo complimented each other magnificently.

From Speed Demons of the West
Rubber City Review
November 03, 2009:

While Bryant was playing in local dives, West was gaining notice among the city’s great western swing bands – and he eventually joined a 23-piece outfit led by Spade Cooley. Already an established name, West met Bryant at one of L.A.’s skid-row music joints in 1948. The two quickly formed a mutual admiration society and began a musical partnership that reached its peak in the studios of L.A.-based Capitol Records.

Given West’s near-reckless approach to the pedal steel guitar, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he recorded with the king of the novelty music craze in the 1940s and early ‘50s, Spike Jones. But the instrumentals that Speedy cut with Jimmy Bryant from 1950 to 1956 on Capitol Records are far more sublime than ridiculous (for the most part) and are widely regarded as little works of art by some of today’s greatest pickers.

From Jimmy Bryant: faster guitar player resurfaces
By Jon Johnson, Country Standard Time
December 2003:

The recordings made by the West/Bryant team (which also usually included bassist Cliffie Stone, rhythm guitarist Billy Strange and drummer Roy Harte) were a groundbreaking mix of country and jazz; clearly influenced by western swing, but outpacing even the most radical recordings made by Bob Wills' Texas Playboys and Spade Cooley's Orchestra in the mid-'40s. West's wild volume swells and pedal tricks provided the perfect accompaniment to Bryant's precise, breakneck lead guitar work.

Although the West/Bryant instrumentals have been reissued on several releases since the mid-'90s, none of Bryant's original solo recordings had ever been reissued on CD until the release in late November of the 3-CD collection "Frettin' Fingers: The Lightning Guitar of Jimmy Bryant" on the Sundazed label.

"He kept hearing about California," says Jimmy Bryant's sister, Lorene Bryant Epps, who is the author of the biography "Jimmy Bryant: Fastest Guitar in the Country." "He and Russell Hayden and Doug McGinnis (two other musicians with whom Bryant was playing at the time) went to California together in a '37 Ford, and they played (gigs) all the way there. And when he got there, I remember he said (he) was not disappointed. He loved it from the start. And it wasn't long after he got there that he met Speedy West."

West, about 25 when he and Bryant met when playing down the street from each other in separate bars, was already a first-call studio musician at Capitol in 1949 and was one of the first steel guitarists to make the switch to pedal steel guitar, which offered greater sonic possibilities than the earlier non-pedal models. Late in 1949, West began appearing on Cliffie Stone's weekly TV series "Hometown Jamboree," and following the departure of guitarist Charlie Aldrich the following year, Bryant soon joined him.

I was about 7 or 8 when I began listening to these singles, and it was an event for my kid self. I'd put the records on, climb onto my bed, and start bouncing and jumping around like a young maniac in time to the music. It was exhilarating. Even children can be moved by great music.

Kate Rusby - Who Will Sing Me Lullabies

Lay me down gently, lay me down low,
I fear I am broken and won't mend, I know.
One thing I ask when the stars light the skies,
Who now will sing me lullabies,
Oh who now will sing me lullabies.
From Who Will Sing Me Lullabies by Kate Rusby

Songs don't need to be complicated to share a powerful experience. Sometimes, the simpler, the better. Today's song is a great example of that...one guitar, one Irish bouzouki (sometimes known as an octave mandolin) and one beautiful voice belonging to Kate Rusby. An English-born singer/songwriter hailing from Penistorn, Barnsley in South Yorkshire, she was born into a family of musicians and has been performing since she was a child.

From her bio:

When Island Records opts to resurrect its cherished ‘Island Pink’ label, you know something special is afoot. This October, the imprint behind such cornerstones of British folk as Nick Drake’s ‘Five Leaves Left’ and Fairport Convention’s ‘Liege & Lief’  will join forces with Pure Records to release ‘20′, a beguiling new album that sees Kate Rusby celebrate 20 years of music-making.

“It’s a real honour for me, and the Pink label is a very special touch”, says Kate. “I always loved listening to ‘Crazy Man Michael’ from ‘Liege & Lief ‘ when I was growing up.”

On ’20’, Kate and her core band are flanked by a who’s who of British, Irish and American folk / bluegrass as she revisits key songs from her back catalogue. Fittingly, former Fairport guitarist and English folk luminary Richard Thompson is among the many guests (he duets and plays electric guitar on ‘Who Will Sing Me Lullabies’). Elsewhere, Paul Weller clearly relishes duetting on ‘Sun Grazers’, an ace new Kate song that beds-down nicely alongside 20’s tasteful glances backward. Other guests from the rock world include Stephen Fretwell and Radiohead’s Philip Selway.

Given the sizeable pool of guests on ’20’, we’ll forgo a full role-call here. Suffice to say that many are household names (Paul Weller, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Eddie Reader etc.), while others (e.g. flautist Michael McGoldrick, dobro ace Jerry Douglas and folk singer Nic Jones) are hugely respected figures in the world of trad music.

Kate has sung some of these songs for many years now, but a great folk song evolves with its interpreter, the singer’s life-experience eking out fresh nuances of import and understanding. That’s clearly what has happened on 20’s re-workings of  ‘Planets’ and ‘Annan Waters’. “That song’s still one of my all-time favourites”, says Kate of the latter. “It’s so very beautiful and tragic and the way the tune flows always makes it a pleasure to sing.”

Rusby's music is a wonderful combination of traditional influences paired with a contemporary approach that that sounds simultaneously modern and timeless. Who Will Sing Me Lullabies is a song to get lost in. All you need to do is let it sweep you up.

I lay here; I'm weeping for the stars they have come,
I lay here not sleeping; now the long night has begun.
The man in the moon, oh he can't help but cry,
For there's no one to sing me lullabies,
Oh there's no one to sing me lullabies.
From Who Will Sing Me Lullabies by Kate Rusby

Cordell Jackson - The Split

Yes, Cordell Jackson was the real deal. With her Hagstrom Condor, Jackson could rock out with the best. A guitar-twangin' grandmama with the volume amped up to 11 and reverb to spare, she was a bold guitar icon.

"If I want to wang dang rock 'n' roll at 69 years old dressed up in an antebellum dress, it ain't nobody's business but mine."
-- Cordell Jackson

From her bio at Country Grrl by Cheryl Cline:

Cordell Jackson is best known as the rockin' grandma who plays rings around rockabilly guitarist Brian Setzer in a 1991 Budweiser ad. But to rockabilly and roots-music aficionados, she's better known as an early rockabilly pioneer, the first woman recording engineer in the U.S., an early woman record label owner, the first woman to write, sing, accompany, record, engineer, produce and manufacture her first record, and of course, the rockin' grandma who can play rings around Brian Setzer.

Originally from Pontotoc, Mississippi, she was born Cordell Miller on July 15, 1923. Her father, a fiddler, lead a popular local string band called the Pontotoc Ridge Runners. He encouraged the young Cordell to play music; she learned guitar, piano, and upright bass, and at age twelve she was performing with her father's band on his radio show in Tupelo. Later she added mandolin, banjo, and harmonica to her repertoire, but she's best known for electric guitar -- her trademark Hagstrom.

In 1943, she married William Jackson, and settled in Memphis. According to Kicks magazine, "It was either marry a country dude or a city dude, and I chose a city dude." In Memphis she joined the Fisher Air Craft Band, and wrote songs (she almost won a Hillbilly Song contest sponsored by Tex Ritter). But her entrance into rockabilly legend -- as well as into the lists of woman "firsts" -- began in 1947 with her purchase of recording equipment from Kabakoff Radio and Appliance in Memphis. With this installed in her living room, Miriam Linna writes in the liner notes to Cordell Jackson: Live In Chicago, she "took off taping songs and sing-alongs, and experimenting with local musician pals." She also wrote songs and recorded demos for other acts for Sam Phillips's Memphis Recording Studio before he started Sun Records.

Jackson created Moon Records in 1956, to record her own single, "Beboppers Christmas" b/w "Rock and Roll Christmas. She was soon in the business of releasing rockabilly singles by others. The best-known Moon act, Allen Page and the Big Four, originally came to Memphis to audition for Sun. Jackson says, "They aimed for the Sun and ended up on the Moon!" [Kicks magazine] Allen is best known for the moderately popular single, "Dateless Night," written by Jackson, and "She's the One That's Got It." The Big Four enter rock & roll history, at least as a footnote, as an early favorite and small influence on the Fab Four.

Locally active in Memphis through the 70s and 80s, Jackson worked up a humorous persona called Maxie Pearl, the alter-ego of Minnie Pearl, who chased money instead of men; recorded a novelty song called "Football Widow" which still gets local airplay in Memphis during the football season, and produced a Contemporary Christian radio show. But she received more national attention -- and international attention, within the European rockabilly scene --when the 80s rockabilly and roots rock revival caught up with her. Alex Chilton and Tav Falco got her playing to a new generation of rockabilly audiences . Tav Falco's Panther Burns covered "Dateless Night" and "She's the One That's Got It" and invited her to play with members of the bands between sets. In 1983 she released a 4-song EP if instrumentals on Moon, "Knockin' 60."

Discovering the Moon singles were collector's items, Jackson revived Moon Records in 1980 to release a compilation album, The 50's Rock on the Moon of Memphis Tennessee: An Oddity. The record itself is now a collector's item.

Most recently, Jackson released Cordell Jackson: Live in Chicago," on Bughouse Records. Recorded on November 16, 1995 at Schubas in Chicago, the CD showcases Jackson's growly guitar style and her boundless sense of fun.

Jackson remains something of an icon; a cherished and colorful character on the Memphis music scene, she opens her house for tours every August. She made a cameo appearance in the film Great Balls of Fire, and continues to flout conventions. Says Cordell: "If I want to wang dang rock 'n' roll at 69 years old dressed up in an antebellum dress, it ain't nobody's business but mine."

Cordell Jackson was a guitar-slingin' grandma who could swing the strings with the best. I'd love to have had the chance to jam with her.

Cedell Davis - Boogie Chillen

Cedell Davis was born to play the blues. No way was he going to let a little thing like a severe case of polio at nine years old keep his voice and guitar silent. The ailment forced him to relearn playing the guitar as a left-hander. He flipped his guitar upside down Jimi Hendrix-style long before Jimi entered this realm of existence and he used a table knife to navigate the fretboard with his right hand as he picked and strummed with his left. The sound was harsh at times, and sounded out of tune often, but once you got used to it, you heard what he was saying. It was raw, and it was pure, and it was true.

From his bio at Fat Possum Records, written by Robert Palmer:

Cedell Davis was born Ellis Davis on June 9, 1927, in Helena, then a booming river town on the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi. He grew up there and in the upper Mississippi Delta around eight miles south of Tunica, on the E.M. Hood plantation, where his brother lived. Together with one of his childhood friends, Isaiah Ross (future Sun recording artist Dr. Ross the Harmonica Boss), Cedell began playing blues, first harmonica, then some guitar.

Then tragedy struck -- during his ninth and tenth years he grappled with severe polio. He returned to Helena, to his mother, who was locally renowned as a healer, though she worked as a cook, and there he began the painful process of relearning, in fact rethinking the guitar, which he could no longer play in the conventional manner. "It took me about three years," he recalls. "I was right- handed, but I couldn't use my right hand, so I had to turn the guitar around; I play left-handed now. But I still needed something to slide with, and my mother had these knives, a set of silverware, and I kinda swiped one of 'em."

This was the beginning of a guitar style that is utterly unique, in or out of blues. The knife-handle on the strings produces uneven pressure, which results in a welter of metal-stress harmonic transients and a singular tonal plasticity. Some people who hear CeDell's playing for the first time think it's out of tune, but it would be more accurate to say he plays in an alternative tuning. Because the way he hears and plays intervals and chords is consistent and systematic.

Cedell began playing around the Delta as a young man, and over the years he continued to work in some of the world's most dangerous dives. Somehow he learned to project a kind of presence that defuses violence, keeping him miraculously whole amid raging chaos. There is something Buddah-like about that presence, a sense of having learned to deal with a physically violent world with his mind. It also enables him to compose and sequence verses for new songs on the spot and hold them in his memory for as long as necessary.

Cedell was a warrior and a survivor in a rough world, and he brought his music home to countless audiences, be they paying fans sitting in a venue or drunken patrons in a roadhouse looking for sex and violence. He was a bluesman, and he didn't compromise.

Hammock - Elm

Sometimes we just need to relax, to sit back, to lie back, to breathe. Music can be your gentle guide down this path. Here's something beautiful to help that journey. No story for this one. Just enjoy.

June Tabor - Seven Summers

It was a long wet year
But still she looked for summer
Grown weary waiting for the sun
She saw the sodden fledglings fasten to the trees
And corn lie flat in fields

From Seven Summers, written by Dave Goulder

This is yet another song that I caught on the radio years ago back in my days as a student at Marshall University in Huntington, WV, then spent more years hunting down.

Situated as I was in the Kentucky/Ohio/West Virginia tri-state area, I could pick up public radio stations in all three states, and Sunday night programming on Ohio and West Virginia Public Radio was pretty terrific. WOUB out of Athens, Ohio in particular had a rotation of three DJs that alternated on those evenings, and you could count on hearing a fantastic mix of music. One DJ favored music from the British Isles; another leaned more toward traditional folk and blues; the third was a devotee of Americana. I loved them all, and I recorded a few of those shows...I had a pretty decent Nakamichi cassette deck ready to record at a moment's notice and I kept a good stash of high-quality blank tapes on hand at all times.

June Tabor

One of the tapes I recorded on one of those Sunday evenings had a pair of songs by the same singer. I knew it was June Tabor, since I already was familiar with her voice and her style, and I was (and still am) a huge fan. But there are no commercials on public radio, so musical sets could last as long as half an hour before the DJ would come in to back-announce the songs that were played. Even then, there was no guarantee you'd hear anything beyond a required station identification and perhaps a promo for an upcoming live music event or two. Then it was back to the music.

So I had two songs to chase down. The first song was easier to identify, since "The Banks of Red Roses" (also known as "The Banks of Roses") is a traditional Irish song that has been traced back to the late 18th century, so I was already somewhat familiar with that one, having heard it performed by a number of musicians over the years. Tabor's version is one of my favorites, an appropriately haunting take on an old murder ballad.

But the second was much tougher. The song title, "Seven Summers," isn't mentioned at all in the lyrics. All I had by way of an identifier was the closest thing that the song had to a refrain: "It was a long wet year." I started searching for that as a song title, since recurring phrases in songs turn out to be the song's title more often than not.

Not in this case.

These were the pre-Internet days, so searching involved wandering into record stores, finding the folk music section (if they had one), checking to see if they had any June Tabor CDs, then scanning the back covers for song titles. It was a frustrating exercise...record shops in my old part of the universe did not have well-stocked inventories of diverse genres of music. I'd be lucky if they had more than two or three of her releases. I also checked her work with Oysterband, a group she has performed with numerous times over the years, just in case. Recordings by this group were just as difficult to locate (when I could find them at all), but no luck.

Then came the Internet. It still took a bit of searching, but I finally found what I was looking for. The album, titled "Aqaba," had both the songs I'd been seeking, plus so many more. It's a fantastic recording.

"Seven Summers," written by Dave Goulder, is a beautiful and melancholy tune, and Tabor's performance highlights that mood to great effect. The arrangement is the definition of simplicity...just piano, playing spare, unhurried chords, perhaps a few partial chords. No runs, no solos. And then there's June Tabor's lush voice filling those spaces with understated beauty. Her singing on this one transports me every time.

Each time I hear this song, it feels like fall has returned...specifically, a gray fall afternoon, slate clouds overhead, bare trees and sidewalks littered with leaves, a snap of chill in the air carrying the aroma of chimney smoke from somewhere in the distance. Perhaps there's a bit of rain falling, peppering the pavement lightly behind you as you slip through the front door after your walk, as you pull off your coat and scarf. You make a cup of tea and relax with it in an easy chair facing the front room window that looks out onto the street. The afternoon slips into evening, and you can see the fireplace behind you reflecting in the window, a soft yellow glow from burning logs the only light in the room.

You sip as the rain begins to fall a little harder, and a melancholy melody begins to come back, mixed with sound of rainfall. Spare chords on a piano, one lovely and somewhat lonely voice, reminiscing about how "It was a long wet year."

It's so nice to have this song nearby when I need a visit from my favorite season, or any other time I just need a reminder of the power of a great song paired with a great performer.

No chance of summer now
She saw the geese returning
Fieldfares are in the swallow skies
Not a lot of sense in hurrying from school
When all the light is done
It was a long wet year
From Seven Summers, written by Dave Goulder

Jorma Kaukonen - Genesis

One of the founding members of the classic 1960s psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane and still a member of the blues band Hot Tuna (with his long-time musical collaborator, bassist Jack Casady, who also was a member of the Airplane), Jorma Kaukonen's musical career has spanned a variety of genres, and he brings a purist-type sensibility to whatever style he happens to inhabit at the moment.

Jorma Kaukonen (courtesy of his website)

From his biography:

A Brief History of Jorma Kaukonen

In a career that has already spanned a half-century, Jorma Kaukonen has been the leading practitioner and teacher of fingerstyle guitar, one of the most highly respected interpreters of American roots music, blues, and Americana, and at the forefront of popular rock-and-roll. He was a founding member of two legendary bands, The Jefferson Airplane and the still-touring Hot Tuna, a Grammy nominee, a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the most in-demand instructor in the galaxy of stars who teach at the Fur Peace Ranch Guitar Camp that he and his wife operate in picturesque Southeastern Ohio.

The son of a State Department official, Jorma Kaukonen, Jr. was born and raised in the Washington D.C. area, with occasional extended trips outside the United States. He was a devotee of rock-and-roll in the Buddy Holly era but soon developed a love for the blues and bluegrass that were profuse in the clubs and concerts in the nation’s capitol. He wanted to take up guitar and make that kind of music himself. Soon he met Jack Casady, the younger brother of a friend and a guitar player in his own right. Though they could not have known it, they were beginning a musical partnership that has continued for over 50 years.

After a break from college and travel overseas, Jorma moved to California, where he returned to classes and earned money by teaching guitar. It was at this time that a banjo-playing friend invited him to join a rock band, and although Jorma’s true passion was roots music, he decided to join. In fact, the new band The Jefferson Airplane got its name from Jorma, who was given the joke nickname Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane, parodying the names of blues legends.

Jorma invited his old musical partner Jack Casady to come out to San Francisco and play electric bass for The Jefferson Airplane, and together they created much of The Jefferson Airplane’s signature sound. Jorma and Jack would jam whenever they could and would sometimes perform sets within sets at Airplane concerts. The two would often play clubs following Airplane performances. Making a name for themselves as a duo, they struck a record deal, and Hot Tuna was born. Jorma left The Jefferson Airplane after the band’s most productive five years, pursuing his full-time job with Hot Tuna.

Over the next three and a half decades Hot Tuna would perform thousands of concerts and release more than two-dozen records. The musicians who performed with them were many and widely varied, as were their styles—from acoustic to long and loud electric jams but never straying far from their musical roots. What is remarkable is that they have never coasted. Hot Tuna today sounds better than ever, playing with the energy of their youth and the skill that they have developed over the year.

The Reverend Gary Davis, a guitarist whose style has influenced generations of guitar players ("Gary Davis took you out of playing baby guitar and made you play it like a grown man." -Taj Mahal) had, and continues to have, a big impact on Kaukonen's style. Davis' fingerpicking style, rooted in ragtime rhythms, are wonderfully precise and musical, with lovely melodies underpinned by moving bass lines that compliment his songs very nicely. Kaukonen employs that same sense of steady rhythm and skillful  fingerpicking as the centerpiece of the song "Genesis," a gentle song that's partly an appeal to the woman he loves, and partly a warning that things could get difficult at times:

And as we walked into the day
Skies of blue had turned to grey
I might have not been clear to say (to say)
I never looked away
I never looked away

It's a beautiful song, and it's a tune that I simply don't tire of hearing. In just a few simple verses, it touches upon myriad feelings and emotions, and it ends on a note of hopeful optimism.

When Kaukonen isn't touring, either as a solo act or with Hot Tuna, he probably can be found at Jorma Kaukonen's Fur Peace Ranch Guitar Camp in Southeastern Ohio (very close to where I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, in fact). He describes the place as "a ranch that grows guitar players," and it provides a series of four-day workshops in guitar, bass, mandolin, plus workshops in songwriting and vocal performance...from beginner to experienced level musicians. Some great musicians teach these classes, such as G.E. Smith, Larry Campbell, Bob Margolin, David Lindley, Jack Casady and Oteil Burbridge.

Can you tell I want to go to this camp?

And when we came out into view
And there I found myself with you
And breathing felt like something new
Along with you
Going along with you

From Genesis by Jorma Kaukonen